God of War III Remastered - PlayStation 4

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In God of War III Remastered, righteous retribution can be yours. Take control of the iconic “Ghost of Sparta” Kratos as he rains carnage and destruction upon the deities who have betrayed him. Armed with Kratos’ deadly double-chained blades, rip through mythology’s most vicious creatures and annihilate anything which gets in your way of destroying Olympus and the mighty Zeus himself. Set in the fantastic realm of Greek mythology, God of War III Remastered brings the critically acclaimed PS3 adventure roaring into life and on to PlayStation 4. Rise from the darkest depths of Hades and scale the very heights of Mount Olympus.

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God of War III Remastered came out as a PlayStation 4 exclusive this past July, 2015. The team at Wholesale Algorithms was behind the development of the game and it was released through SCEA in the USA and SCEE within the UK. Remastering one of the best God of War titles around seemed like only a given for a console that has a desperate need for recurring IP. Bringing back Kratos and his lurid world was a ton of hard work but according to Wholesale Algorithms there is plenty new to see here. So if you have played the initial title on the PS3 and still feel the urge to shed some blood then you might have just the perfect title waiting for you. Let’s dive in and see how the remaster went.

With the PS4 and XB1 beginning to dominate the console market gamers are starting to get more and more familiar with the term 'remastered'. What remastered means, to the cynic, is a repackaged money grab from developers that don’t feel like creating new content. We’ve seen many games follow this path and many more will continue to do so. So with that in mind we definitely had our reservations when it came to God of War III Remastered. We didn’t want to be a cynic but the original God of War III was one of our favorite titles and we hated the idea of it getting re-released without any new content being added. But The Last of Us was a success story in the remastered market so there was some hope.

So we’ve been sitting on God of War III for almost five years now and since then many things have changed. What hasn’t changed is the fact that GOWIII is one of the best action games that has ever been made. A remaster straight to the PS4 makes sense in a sort of nonsensical way, as we would have likely wanted to start with GOW1. Still, the third entry in the series is epic in scale, deep in terms of volume of blood, and appropriately terrible in all of the right ways. So the heck with starting from the beginning, let’s jump right in at the end.

If you aren’t familiar with Kratos and the God of War series then we suggest starting all the way at the beginning with the first game. If you are stubborn or, likely, already holding the third game in your hand then we’ll give you a bit of back story. Kratos is mad. Like, so mad he wants to take on every God in the Greek pantheon and he wants to do it with a rusty blade at his side. Kratos has lost his family due to the machinations of the Gods and, in particular, the ploys of the dirtbag Zeus. In order to avenge the ones he loves Kratos will scream, rend, tear, rip, gut, and decapitate anything with a pulse that tries to slow him down. He’s a mad, bad dude and the developers have done everything they could to put his fury on full display. The third entry into the series starts with Kratos about to destroy Zeus thanks to the help of a race of giant creatures. Kratos is on the verge of winning but, as we all know, things tend to go wrong for the poor and furious man.

God of War III Remastered opens up with one of the coolest and most epic fight scenes in all of gaming. Like a Greek version of D-Day, Kratos charges through swarms of enemy AI while avoiding mythical obstacles. One moment you’ll be flinging yourself underneath the hand of a giant, next you’ll be swinging from a chain attached to another behemoth, and then before you know it you’ll have a cinematic showdown with Poseidon the God of the Ocean. This intro is blood pumping, pulse pounding, and altogether awesome. The camera is always moving, your fingers are always flashing across the different buttons, and the plot is getting pushed along capably without slowing down for dull exposition.

The biggest change to the game is the fact that we now have 60FPS HD 1080p gameplay footage in front of us. Unless you are actually blind you can’t help but see the huge difference between this version and the prior release five years ago. Textures on the old version seem blocky and blurry compared to the crisp HD definition that we get in God of War III Remastered. The animations are smooth and fluid and everything looks so good.

What we also loved, and still love, about the God of War series is that it purposely thumbs its nose at the open world, sandbox-ish style games that are permeating both the PC and the console market. Now the buzzword for gamers seems to be 'open world' which really just means 'aimless' unless you work for Bethesda or on The Witcher: Wild Hunt. God of War III Remastered is a completely linier experience that is designed and driven to be epic and compelling. There is no wandering aimlessly through poorly programmed villages and shoddily voiced NPCs. The game design is tight and it leaves you focusing on the primary elements in play: hack n’ slash and puzzle like platforming.

There are still some issues for this epic cinematic game. The team of developers restored God of War III in all of its glory but they should have considered taking it to the editing block, as well. About 1/3rd of the game suffers due to filler gameplay that is both non memorable and also not interesting. A few mazes really put our patience to the test about 2/3rds of the way through the game and we couldn’t help but feel like we were engaging in busy work.

Really at the end of the day God of War III Remastered on the PlayStation 4 is a faithful and powerful remastering of one of our favorite games of all time. The epic scale combat is there and the bloody executions look better than ever to us.

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